The present invention relates to a method and apparatus used as an aid in coaching game players, for example, soccer, football or baseball players, etc.
Coaching sports teams, or sports individuals, involves teaching individuals how to position themselves and how to conduct themselves in different game play situations. Very often, for sports games involving many players, there are more players than available coaches during practice, or even during game play. While a coach can certainly talk to a group about general play, it is difficult to talk one-on-one with an individual with respect to details about his individual play. The effectiveness of coaching instruction is therefore limited by the number of available coaches.
The present invention provides a virtual assistant coach which can provide more individualized instructions to each player during a practice session, or even during game play, thereby enhancing a player""s training and ability to play.
The virtual assistant coach is provided as a processor driven system which provides coaching instructions to all or selected players individually at substantially the same time to facilitate better overall team performance during game play or practice sessions.
The virtual coach is in the form of a master communications device which is capable of wireless communications with another communications device which may be player wearable. The master communications device includes a processing unit, communications unit, input device and display. The processing unit receives and processes one or more of player statistics, game play information, and player location information, and develops for specific game play situations coaching instructions which are communicated to the player. The player listens to the coaching instructions and, hopefully, carries out those instructions during practice sessions or game play.
The master communications device can selectively communicate with individual players on respective communications channels which do not interfere with the communications channels assigned to other players.
The master communications device can also be operated in a manner which improves the quality of its coaching instruction by comparing actual results of a transmitted coaching instruction to expected results, and updating future coaching instructions based on the result of the comparison.
The master communications device may also provide a display of player locations on a virtual playing field for use in selecting a player for receiving coaching instructions from the master communications device, and for observations by a real coach of operation of the master communications device, as well as results achieved based on coaching instructions issued by the master communications device. The display may also indicate the location of a game play object such as a ball in relation to the displayed players.
These and other advantages and features of the invention will be more clearly understood from the following detailed description which is provided in connection with the accompanying drawings.